Lazy JulieOn January, 23 Lazy Women Team participated in the Sphera Media Lab Conference in Brussels — a day filled with workshops, masterclasses, and networking. During the Voices in Exile segment of the event, I had the opportunity to interview Asal Abasian, a journalist and queer activist from Iran.
Our conversation focused on exile, the experience of activism under an oppressive regime, and the concept of belonging — topics we frequently explore at Lazy Women. As someone in exile myself since October 2022, I sought to weave my own perspective into the discussion with Asal. Below, you’ll find a condensed version of our interview.
Could you tell us how you ended up in exile?
Asal: I was born in Iran and I started my journalism career there in 2009, at 18 years old, working with most prominent media outlets like Sharq Daily and Telegraph Magazine. Due to threats and the real risk of imprisonment, I fled to Turkey in October 2021 and later moved to France after receiving French national human rights award (The Marianne Initiative). I’ve been based in Paris since January 2023.
People don’t really go into exile just because they want to. Was there a specific moment to you, a point of no return, when you realised you had no other option?
Asal: My queer identity was not public in Iran, and my and my collective’s activism were underground. But somehow, the intelligence service found out about it, which put my life in serious danger. During interrogations, they used my identity as a point of pressure. In Iran, being openly queer means losing all professional and social opportunities. So it was what pushed me to flee Iran. And besides, that — imprisonment, threats, harsh interrogations and all other risks. So I was forced to flee Iran because I was in serious danger of revealing my identity as a queer.
I understand that struggle. Even though my experience of imprisonment and interrogation was quite short, it was also something that forced me to flee the country — about 3 years ago, due to the protests against the war in Ukraine. Being a human rights activist in exile is challenging, as people don’t often see the point of advocating for things when you’re not on the ‘battlefield’. Therefore, many question the impact of such activism. How do you see it?
Asal: In Iran, it is a bit different, because if you live in Iran as a queer activist, it’s impossible to have any publicity. You need to always be underground and therefore, your impact is always on a micro scale. If you want to be a voice of queer community in Iran or, from a holistic point of view, in the MENA region, you need to somehow get out of it, because except Lebanon or Turkey, it’s impossible to exist as an out queer activist. So I think in this case, it’s a better chance and an opportunity to be advocating about queers in Iran, as well as about journalism and freedom of expression in Iran outside of Iran, because that’s how the ecosystem works. I can say that about everything. Everything. Even on your personal social media, as a journalist, you are under this shade of censorship, you never can express your real opinion against the Islamic Republic and politics.
If you are a journalist in Iran, you can never be yourself.
What do you think the global community misunderstands most about Iranian resistance? What are the biggest misconceptions?
Asal: After the ‘woman, life, freedom’ movement, what I observed as a journalist, as an Iranian and as a global citizen is that Western media often exoticises Iran, reducing our struggles to simplified narratives. The reality is far more complex.
As a queer, you’ll always be under a colonial reading of the West.
It means that you can barely find something close to our reality in the mainstream media. As an Iranian, a queer person, and a journalist, I see it as our responsibility to counter these misrepresentations and tell our own stories.
You describe yourself as a global citizen. Can you explain what that means to you?
Asal: I never mention that I’m Iranian and I never feel like that I’m Iranian. I feel like the Persian language is a major part of my identity, but I never belonged to a land. I believe that I’m a cosmopolitan citizen and I’m a person who can experience living in every land, in every culture, and explore all of them as an observer. So, yes, I always mention that I was born in Iran, but I never care about that. Identity papers force me to belong to Iran, the first 28-29 years of my life were there. I had this privilege to know the geopolitics situation better. It might help me to work as a specialist for a human rights organisation or as an advocate for issues about Iran. But it doesn’t mean that my identity, my feelings and my mind belong to it.
I observed this tendency to ask people in exile and refugees whether they feel the need to stay connected to their roots, to their culture. Especially if the country they stay in is completely different from the country they were born in. So my question is, have you ever felt such a need, considering your take of being a global citizen? Do you feel pressure to stay connected to your roots?
Asal: I focus on my close community, not public expectations. I experienced cyberbullying because of my open queer identity or my political opinions, especially from monarchists and the Iranian diaspora, but I don’t let nationalism or far-right narratives define me. As an international leftist, I don’t care about this kind of thing.
You are based in Paris, France. Are you confident expressing yourself in writing as a journalist in French?
Asal: No, unfortunately, in the past two years I’ve faced language barriers and even racism, which has made me resilient towards learning French. But I want to overcome this because I admire French writers like Michel Foucault and Marguerite Duras, and I hope to read and write in French in the future.
I wish you success in that! As a linguist, I truly understand the psychological pressure that one experiences when moving to another country when it was not planned at all. One last question: Do you ever see yourself returning to Iran?
Asal: As I’m not Nostradamus, I can’t predict the future, so I don’t know what exactly to say. Through this experience of the last three years and three months living in exile, I don’t think I’ll be back for at least one or two decades. Even if the regime collapses, deep-rooted societal issues like homophobia won’t change overnight. I still receive death threats from Iranian extremists, even in Paris. Safety isn’t just about regime change, people will not be safe in the next chapter of our country, at least for many years. So, yeah, I don’t think I will be back very soon.
We have a joke in Iran. We have freedom of expression, but we don’t have freedom after expression.
So even in the next chapter of our country, I don’t think we will be free to express ourselves.
Interview by Julie Antropova.
Julie Antropova is a linguist, human rights advocate, and journalist based in Paris. Originally from Russia, she reflects on her Eastern European background in her writing. In her free time, she loves reading and discussing books, visiting art exhibitions, and learning foreign languages.